A self-styled visionary who attracted many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Key Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought many of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with making untrue prophecies, including stating the figure alerted her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign on scams and hoaxes.
“As paradoxical as it may seem, she actually feels relief, believing this is an opportunity to reveal the truth of the events with transparency and to definitively put an end to all forms of speculation, misunderstanding and controversy,” said Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office said that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His action was aimed to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The late pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
